Conclusion

The AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics card based on the Tahiti processor with the Graphics Core Next architecture is undoubtedly the fastest single-GPU solution available today. And it will remain such until Nvidia’s next-generation Kepler-based products. The new card features excellent overclocking potential, its performance increasing proportionally to the frequencies. We haven’t seen top-end graphics card overclock that well for very long.

The card’s power consumption, noise and temperature have remained the same as those of its predecessor Radeon HD 6970. It’s good that the card doesn't need more power but bad that they have not designed a quieter cooler. If you value silence, you will have to purchase alternative coolers or equip your Radeon HD 7970 with a liquid cooling system.

There’s a lot of other improvements such as Multi-Stream technology with support for up to six monitors simultaneously, reduced power consumption in 2D mode, double amount of onboard memory, increased computing capabilities (not verified yet, but we take AMD’s word for it). All of this makes the Radeon HD 7970 an attractive buy, especially as driver optimizations are going to make it even faster.

So, AMD has made its move and we’re now looking forward to Nvidia's response.